Third of UK businesses in the dark over mobile security incidents

Samsung survey highlights growing mobile disconnect

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Remote working has freed employees from the shackles of their workplace desks in recent years, but a number of UK businesses are not taking the associated risks around losing company data very seriously.

That's according to a survey of 180 IT decision makers conducted by Samsung UK, which found that more than one third (34%) of CTOs are clueless of how many mobile security incidents their business suffered in the last year, while almost a third (30%) do not know how many mobile handsets were lost or stolen in that period.

The survey also found that nearly half (47%) of businesses have had at least one company handset lost or stolen in the last year, while 7% have seen more than 200 go missing.

Corporate costs

Security breaches are providing costly, according to the survey, which found that a quarter of businesses have incurred costs of more than £15,000 in the last 12 months, while 11% have incurred costs of more than £25,000.

With the rise of remote working, leading to more personal devices accessing corporate networks, the risk of a mobile security breach is on the rise.

According to a recent survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), at 4.2 million, there was a record number of UK home works in the first three months of 2014, reflecting Samsung's survey finding that almost one fifth (18%) of businesses are seeing up to five times as many devices connect to corporate networks compared with two years ago.

The UK government recently published guidelines for enterprises on how to use Samsung smartphones (including the Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5) with the company's KNOX enterprise security platform, which provides hardware and software protection, device encryption, per-app VPN capability, and a secure app store.